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The July 2021 Visual Novel Monthly Recap video is out. The biggest announcement is related to a certain popular Nitro + title. That said this was a pretty crazy stacked month with plenty of releases, announcements and even a few TL cancellations.

School days

Very salient insights. I enjoyed watching the video. Couple of thoughts maybe to add: --> What about the relationship of VNs to anime, considering most people came from the latter. --> What is the future of VNs, given the continued decline in reading literature? --> The relationship of adult content to the literary value of VNs

Fatal Twelve. It popped up randomly in the Switch store the other day, jeez y'all gotta market better! Fatal Twelve is a, uh... battle of wits style battle royale death game? Except there's no hard violence- no epic Fate/Stay battles to the death. At the other end of the spectrum, there's no glorified verbal debates like Danganronpa's Class Trials. That's probably my biggest first impression disappointment going into this VN lol. The basic premise is that 12 people died, and through an enigmatic process called Divine Selection they are put through a 12 week altered reality where none of them actually died. The goal? To eliminate all other participants via weekly Elections in the Court of Fate. Other than that they are relatively free to do as they please with their newfound time. In order to Elect someone, a participant must have their opponents' 1) Name 2) Cause of Death 3) Life Regret. An eliminated participant will have their death become reality once again, and any physical actions or influence they made between their original death and the current present is erased. The sole survivor of the Divine Selection gets the privilege to defy fate and live on while the rest perish as fate originally intended. The whole process is supervised by none other than Parca, a snarky self proclaimed Goddess of Destiny. Yo you're cute and all, but, I mean, wtf kind of name is Parca? The 12 participants all have different backgrounds and circumstances ranging from mafioso, wealthy businessman, housewife, single old man, smuggler, rich indian prince, female child, and of course, our protagonist, your every day ordinary high school male high school female with a delinquent appearance: Rinka. She really is just a high school kid, as she mainly spends the first half of the Divine Selection just mulling about her school's upcoming culture festival and friendships, with her research into the other participants being limited to really amateur attempts such as trying to Google them on the internet. The adults do all of the heavy lifting, forming alliances and long con betrayals. Who looks more out of place here, the handsome Nigerian Prince or the delinquent schoolgirl lol. The story plays episodic/weekly, with the first few weeks being easily forgetful since they were used to eliminate the fodder cast and establish the mechanics of the Divine Selection as well as give you a feel for how the other participants are going about their days. Might as well have called this VN Fatal Six, since that's when the remaining cast get to have some better interactions and scenarios with each other. As I said earlier, the weekly eliminations in the Court of Fate also leave much to be desired, as those segments really lack any climax feel. No oomph. One person just Elects someone, calls out their name, cause of death, and regret, and that's it. Moving onto the next week. YO I FEEL SAD THAT THE DIVINE SELECTION ELECTION ELIMINATIONS BASICALLY BOIL DOWN TO LIST YOUR OPPONENT'S 1-2-3 LINERS AND NOT HOUR LONG DANGANRONPA CLASS TRIAL SEGMENTS Pretty curious to see how this can end, like if there'll be any jaw dropping twists or if it'll just end straightforwardly. ~~ Another VN err otome that just came out today that I've been waiting for is Bustafellows. For some reason I thought this was made by the same devs IdeaFactory/Otomate who made the blockbusters Code;Realize and CollarXMalice, but apparently not. Still looks like it has the potential to be included in the list of high quality otome VNs that everyone who gets into otomes should read though. You play as Teuta, a cheerful 21yo freelance journalist living in modern fictional U.S. New Sieg. Looking for her next scoop she happened upon one of the heroes, Limbo, a famous skilled arrogant lawyer on the side of justice. Hoping to catch an interview she calls out to him, but much to her shock he just collapses and dies, blood pouring out of his chest. So what does she do? She timeleaps one hour into the past into the body of another in order to warn Limbo about his impending doom. ...Oh yeah, this should be good.